Allow five days of public comment before signing bills (Comments)"Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days. ." — Plan to Change Washington

Tougher rules for lobbyists and former officials (Comments)"When you walk into my administration, you will not be able to work on regulations or contracts related to your former employer for two years. When you leave, you will not be able to lobby the administration throughout the remainder of my term in office." — 5/19/08, Billings, Mont.

Put agency meetings with lobbyists online (Comments)"When there are meetings between lobbyists and a government agency, we won't be going to the Supreme Court to keep it secret like Dick Cheney and his energy task force. We'll be putting them up on the Internet for every American to watch. And instead of allowing lobbyists to slip big corporate tax breaks into bills during the dead of night, we will make sure every single tax break and earmark is available to every American online." — 6/22/07, Manchester, N.H.

Disclose contractor lobbying (Comments)"Obama will create a 'contracts and influence' database that will disclose how much federal contractors spend on lobbying, and what contracts they are getting and how well they complete them." — Obama's Blueprint for Change

To honor these commitments concerning lobbying and lobbyists it would be smart for the Administration to hire a group of attorneys from varying backgrounds, say a tax law attorney, a tort attorney, and an ip attorney, to look into and report the details of each interaction with lobbyists to the public. This would also help the President to keep his promise of having a more open style of policy making. Having this group of attorneys could also help with disclosing regulatory conversations and the results of meetings with department heads. I feel that having attorneys observe and report these conversations, deals, and meetings would help with removing the "legal barrier" of understanding what is happening so that the public will be able to be as informed as possible without having to have an understanding legal jargon.